A page-turning account of the international cocaine trade, presented as five lessons in how to move tons of the drug across borders Forget about cocaine concealed in false-bottomed suitcases or swallowed in ovules resistant to gastric juices. When entire national economies are kept afloat by the money from cocaine smuggling, the quantities these tactics represent are meaningless. When a commodity like cocaine becomes a mainstay of the international...

"Presents the results of journalist Gary Webb's investigation into the roots of the crack cocaine epidemic in South Central Los Angeles--a story that cost him his job after he uncovered evidence that links the U.S. government and the CIA-backed Nicaraguan contras with drug profits"--

Winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award * A National Bestseller "An exceptional story collection." -New York Times Book Review The well-intentioned protagonists of Brief Encounters with Che Guevera-including a disillusioned NGO worker, the wife of a special operations officer, and an obssessed ornithologist-are caught, to both disastrous and hilarious effect, in the maelstrom of political and social upheaval surrounding them. With masterful pacing and...

The author chronicles the dark secret life he led when, despite building for himself a respectable career as a literary agent, he embraced crack cocaine; went on a two-month binge; and lost his job, his home, and all his money.

Love story between a young girl and a seventeen-year old boy, both of whom had connections with drugs but in opposite ways. This creates a conflict for her family and death for some.

"The original MTV VJs offer a behind-the-scenes oral history of the early years of MTV, circa 1981 to 1985, when it was exploding, reshaping the culture, and forming "the MTV generation."MTV's first VJs (along with the late J.J. Jackson) had front-row seats to a cultural revolution--and the hijinks of rock stars from Adam Ant to Cyndi Lauper. Their worlds collided, of course: John Cougar invited Nina Blackwood to a late night "party" that proved to...

Three years after giving up drinking, Jowita Bydlowska found herself throwing back a glass of champagne like it was ginger ale. It was a special occasion: a party celebrating the birth of her first child. It also marked Bydlowska's immediate, full-blown return to crippling alcoholism. In the gritty and sometimes grimly comic tradition of the bestselling memoirs Lit by Mary Karr and Smashed by Koren Zailckas, Drunk Mom is Bydlowska's account of the...